Crossing the Line
by SaturnineSunshine
Summary: 4x08 style."He can follow the scent of her want around the city and he always knows where to find her. He remembers the judgment of Serena that pushed Blair away when he first found glory in her in the chastity she urged him to violate.


A/N: I got a request for a 4x09 o/s so here it is. Not sure this is what is expected. It's basically what happened in the episode. But I hope you enjoy.

Summary: He can follow the scent of her want around the city and he always knows where to find her. He figures that it will always be Serena who deters Blair. He remembers the judgment of Serena that pushed Blair away when he first found glory in her in the chastity that she urged him to violate.

Disclaimer: Quotes and such are all GG. I couldn't come up with Chuck's inner smugness. Or more importantly, his outer smugness. Thanks to **comewhatmay.x** who beta-ed this hardcore for me just so I could get it out before Monday. (She liked it).

* * *

He's crossed a line. Her eyes are looking at him in that soft way and it doesn't matter. This was supposed to be goodbye. He waits for a moment before pulling at her hair, letting it spill down her back.

He's crossed a line.

The words almost spill from his lips.

_I've never hated anyone more._

The true ones that never stopped.

_I love you._

.

"Where have you been? You haven't been home in days."

He can't help it. Couldn't help it, never could. He's wearing proper attire (three piece suit, with a purple paisley tie, thank you very much) for the first time since tearing off his jacket and thrusting her skirt up past her thighs, a ripped garter wrapped around his hand like a gauze bandage to heal every ache he ever had. Even the ones that occurred in dark alleys in the Red Light District of the Czech Republic.

His answer is practiced (New York Marathon). Something that he's been thinking of while his tongue stokes her fire. But he sees her and all of a sudden none of that matters. Nate's new penchant for plaid and sob stories about lying blondes don't matter because he sees the most beautiful and manipulative brunette he's ever had the pleasure of pleasuring and the simple truth is something that he simply cannot ignore.

He has to do it again.

He needs to do it again.

She's acting like she doesn't see him but he knows better. He knows that they can't be in each other's proximity without the world starting to burn.

_Every nerve ending in my body is electrified by hatred._

_There's a fiery pit of hatred burning inside me, ready to explode._

That's the way it is. That's the way it always will be.

Nate can't feel her presence without even looking like Chuck can and he's never seen anything he's wanted more. He never could. Even if he is sharp enough to realize that his BlackBerry isn't in fact in the limo, but in his hand. But he doesn't care. He doesn't care that he can't come up with a good enough excuse because when it comes to her, he doesn't need one.

His dismissal is succinct and clear and Nate doesn't care.

He never did.

Her defenses aren't as strong as they used to be. They disappear down a brownstone's vestibule and it's worth it how much she caves to him. Because even when they're finished and she pushes him away indifferently like he hasn't just incurred something that he knows she never had with anyone else, he can't help but watch her walk away from him as he smoothes his hair back, relishing in the fact that no matter how much she says it, this will never be the last time.

Her skirt's on backwards.

He would know. He put it there.

.

"That better not be me you're calling."

He likes how she freezes at the sound of his voice behind her as he removes her cell phone from her hand. He looks to see his name highlighted on the screen as she turns to reach for it again.

"I wasn't," she protests. He finally looks at her, his smirk growing languid. She looks down at her appearance and rips the door of his limo open. He follows her dutifully, looking with disapproval as she turns her skirt around after he closes the door behind her.

"I don't really see the point if it's just going to end up on the floor again."

She sends him a glare that is as much as an aphrodisiac as heated emotion but he doesn't like it anyway.

"Well, I'm here," he says. "What is it?"

"I wasn't going to call you," she says apathetically. She looks at him begrudgingly. "Serena just thought I was going to."

"Why?"

"Because I told her that I would stop sleeping with you."

"Why?"

He knows his voice sounds more intimate than hateful but he can't help it. He knows he sounds to insulted and still a little vexed at the mere thought. He was under that skirt just hours ago.

"I lied."

She better believe she did.

.

31 missed calls. She's a tease. He hates her.

He knows he loves her.

_"I know I said I was quitting Chuck, and I am. It's just a bit harder to chuck Chuck than I thought."_

He can follow the scent of her want around the city and he always knows where to find her. He figures that it will always be Serena who deters Blair. He remembers the judgment of Serena that pushed Blair away when he first found glory in her in the chastity that she urged him to violate.

He leans against the doorframe as Serena breezes by him without a glance. She doesn't notice. He isn't worried.

What worries him is the maid he can hear bustling below. Serena may be infuriating but it is always Dorota who is the epitome of a cockblocker. Dorota never ran away from her. Dorota was also the reason that he was waiting half an hour on top of the Empire State Building only to have his heart ripped out.

But he was willing to overlook that.

Because he can't help it. He can't help but smirk at the sound of the water in the bathtub running and exactly what she isn't wearing while she's ignoring his calls which obviously just leads to her thinking of him.

So he waits.

He waits as he listens to her pulling silk over her skin and when she walks into the bedroom that he's lounging in, waiting for her, he knows she was sent from his own personal hell dimension because her hair is pulled up too elegantly from that neck that will always make him want to ravish her.

.

She's a liar. She's a manipulative bitch and this is exactly what he doesn't want. He doesn't want them connecting. He doesn't want the ability to know exactly when she's lying and the way she smiles when he orders her to meet him at the telephone booth in front of the dress circle.

She's a liar.

She is the most manipulative bitch he has ever met.

And he loves her.

This has gone on too far.

It's too easy. It's too easy to say it.

"Give into your desires. Your needs."

He remembers dark blackouts all too well where her back was pressed to his front and he knew exactly how to manipulate her body with his blunt crassness.

_Have sex with me._

_You are disgusting and I hate you._

It was amusing that they always seemed to end up in the dark together when she spewed hatred and venom. It was strange that he found her so desirable when she squirmed.

_You can't tell me that Bertie Wooster is satisfying your needs._

Her faced dropped as it always had and he knew it. He knew it as she did. Neither of them changed. They were just going back to the beginning.

.

"That was the last time."

He remembers thrusting her against a piano and at the present moment that is all he can think about. It's all he knows because somehow they ended up back in her bedroom right before Serena arrived home and miraculously quiet enough to avoid suspicion from the slumbering Eleanor.

He can't help but laugh in his euphoric high. He's spread on her bedroom floor, looking back at her rumpled form attempting to catch her breath.

"Define... last time," he said drolly, smiling to himself at the poetry at all of this. It is so hard to be angry at her, especially with all of this lusty pleasure for her coursing through his veins. He feels her scowl but has to look back at her because she is just so breathtaking with his fluids all over her.

"It's exactly as it sounds."

Her mouth forms to say something else and he knows that she's refraining from uttering his last name. This would be too familiar. More familiar than it already is.

"You mean like after you shuddered around me the first time on that piano downstairs and you said _this is a one-time thing_," Chuck said. "Like that sort of last time? Because if I recall correctly, you straddled me about two seconds after I caught my breath. You're lucky I have exemplary stamina."

Her teeth are clenched and he wants to lick her.

"If it's that sort of 'last time' then maybe you should be more specific," Chuck sighs, sitting up against the bed that he wants to try out. "Maybe you mean a five-time thing."

"What are you getting out of this?"

This is what he has to laugh at.

"You really underestimate your abilities, Waldorf."

Her brows are furrowed when she kisses him.

He doesn't stop to think maybe that is a mistake.

.

"Colin isn't a distraction. You are."

That hurts more than he would like it too. His incredulity spurs her on and it's come back. He feels ready to burst out of his skin until he realizes it. Her recognizes faltering tone and he smirks.

"We have to talk. Or rather not talk."

_I prefer to talk after._

Always this way with them and he doesn't want anything else. He could never really want anything else.

Stripping down to that glorious lingerie at his best friend's graduation party was the most arousing thing besides burlesque stages and pianos. He almost wished that Gossip Girl wasn't so punctual because if for one time he actual spat out those words, he could have had her writhing in the best friend's couch that vied for her attention, Chuck finally having the satisfaction that he won the only thing that was ever worth winning.

And he would be right.

He still knows that beautiful scheming half to his withering soul is lying.

He wouldn't have it any other way.

"It's so hard I had to work out my desires somewhere."

If only he didn't know her that well.

"Nice try," he says smoothly. Because Chuck Bass is never the distraction. Chuck Bass is what she needs. He knows this. And it's creeping up on him again but he smothers it below his aroused facade that is nowhere near a facade.

He needs her.

And it's circling back up again.

Her eyebrows arch up innocently and this is happening. He didn't buy that 100 pack of condoms for nothing.

Or rather, Arthur didn't.

Her smile is perfect and this needs to end.

He wishes he just didn't need it so much.

.

It isn't the first time. He says it so smoothly and so easily and she doesn't even flinch. It isn't his fault. It isn't his fault that she makes him crazy. Because she does. It isn't his fault that they are both awful people who deserve each other because even now, he knows. He stands there defending her, and he knows that he's crossed a line.

"I, for one, can fully corroborate Miss Waldorf's story."

.

He hates it. He hates even listening to something that he knows is a lie. Blair has too much integrity and he was waiting in that phone booth for far too long. Blair has integrity. Too much to have an affair with a professor, but when it comes to him, Blair will be up for anything.

He's flaring and it happens. Just like it happened before when she would bat her eyelashes innocently at Dear Nathaniel or James Schiller, who actually thought she was some 95 pound brunette who liked vineyards instead of that insatiable vixen who he couldn't help but please.

She would pull away and he would laugh. Serena had been just in the next room and suddenly she was pulling out the stops.

"Suddenly you're getting shy on me," he murmured delicately. Blair's eyes darted to the door and that flame flickered within him. "Now I'm so beneath you, you won't even kiss me?"

It's a sign. A sign he doesn't want so he just ignores her.

"Technically you're on top of me."

He can't help but kiss her.

It is small memories like those that make Chuck smirk. He can't help it. Can't help her. He's not crossing a line when he says it.

"She was indeed having an affair with Professor Forrester. I know this because I keep tabs on everyone Blair sees and talks to due to my insatiable jealousy."

It's a lie. They're all lies. He knows it's a lie when he tells himself that this is just physical. It's easier to pretend because the first thing that ever transpired between them was physical but then again, he found a way to screw that up. He tries to remember a time when he really thought she was this virginal princess, but he realizes it.

It's a lie.

She never was.

They're all lies.

It's a lie because he doesn't want her excess because he'll tire of her. That was always the problem. The more he tastes her, inhales her, feeds off of her, the more he needs her. That's the real reason. The real reason is that he can't quit her.

But he knows he's winning her. He sees how his persuasion always convinces her.

"Step any closer and I'll scream."

"You better believe you will."

She only ever screamed with him.

Then again, he was always cockblocked when it mattered the most.

"Professor Forrester is downstairs."

"What?-Why?"

He can hear it in his voice. He can hear what he knows is true all along.

"He's here for me, as my date."

_"A date?"_

It's in those two words that he hears it again. The monster that plagued him for the first time and he's sure will plague him until the day he dies.

His insatiable jealousy.

He lets her go. But Dorota walks away and it keeps building. The pressure in his chest keeps building and he rips off his robe to shove his arms through a suitable jacket because he can feel it. He can feel the interloping man who looks upon the body that he's marked, as his now and forever and he can't stand it. She's terrible at lying now that he's knocked down her defenses with his astronomical skills in her bed.

_"If anyone asks you're my date."_

She hears the stranger's voice down the stairs and he can't help it.

"_Blair_," he calls as he attempts to comb his hair back.

This is wrong. This is going all wrong. He knows things are changing quickly but nothing is changing within him. He's always been this way. He's always been this soulless monster that eats anything in his way just to get what he wants. He will always want her.

He will always get her.

It's record time. It's something he prides himself on but this is the end. He knows he has to control himself. He just has to. This has gone on too far.

.

"I keep tabs on everyone Blair sees and talks to due to my insatiable jealousy. Though she did state something to the effect that he didn't quite satisfy her the way I used to."

If only it were a lie. But he can't. Not when it will help her and not when her neck is so visible. But what truly strikes him isn't his confession masquerading as a mask itself as another confession.

"It's true."

At that moment it's very clear. He has crossed a line.

He follows her. He destroys everyone she sees. Three years ago, he never thought this would be possible. He never thought that he would be spending the anniversary of Blair's tarnished removal of virginity doing exactly what he had that night. He never thought love would be easy.

If only it wasn't so hard.

He really wants that phone booth right now. Now that a public take down was initiated, he realizes that it's just like it used to be. It's just like slumbering in that bed with the threat of Georgina being defused. So he pretends that they're friends right now.

Because the reality of what really is about to happen as he lets her hug him is even worse. He wants to pull away. He wants to be done with this because her rejection would be even worse than any social destruction she could concoct.

But it's her. She pulls him closer. She kisses him more fiercely. She's the one who creates that gunshot in his brain that causes his body to arch to accommodate her in his arms again.

Literally.

The facade is gone. She's kissing him again and he knows he never hated her.

He just loved her too much.

.

He has crossed a line. He realizes this as her fingers ghost across his neck and he can't help himself.

He can't help but hold her close and now he can't help but not move. She doesn't have a satin eye mask and he doesn't have a white t-shirt on. They're completely bare before each other and she's actually succumbing to slumber with him by her side. Finally letting him.

Tonight, he had done something horrible. He had announced to a crowded room how insane this woman makes him and he heard her agree that no one could ever have a chance of pleasing her like he can.

The previous performance just made that evident. She kisses him and lets him pick her up to do something they hadn't tried in the past week. They weren't making hate anymore. But he couldn't admit to himself that it was different. But it didn't feel like it. Her nails still scrape at his neck and she still purred dirty nothings in his ear. He still tremors and he was still curling around her.

The truth is that he has crossed a line.

Chuck Bass was never one for following the rules.

Then again, it was a line that has been crossed all along. Exactly three years earlier, to be exact.


End file.
